Judge rules Trump administration order to fire FEMA staffers was illegal

Nathan Howard/Reuters

A federal judge said in a filing Friday that a Trump administration order for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cut its staffing nearly in half was illegal.

In a decision that marked a critical victory for union workers in the ongoing lawsuit, US District Judge Susan Illston in Northern California said the Department of Homeland Security “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” when it revoked FEMA’s authority to renew contracts for the agency’s on-call disaster response teams. She also rebuked officials for deleting Signal messages that could have been used as evidence in the lawsuit.

The Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery teams, known as CORE, make up about 40% of FEMA’s workforce. The teams are often the first federal boots on the ground when hurricanes and other large disasters strike. Many of those workers oversee aid distribution and long-term funding to states and communities.

Traditionally, CORE workers have served two-to-four-year contracts that were almost always renewed. But amid an aggressive Trump administration effort to downsize the federal government in 2025, DHS limited FEMA to renewing these contracts to 180 days at a time while it considered a long-term plan to shrink the agency.

In January, DHS instructed FEMA to let at least some of those contracts lapse to force employees out as their terms expire.

The moves were part of a broader push by the Trump administration to overhaul FEMA, shrink its size and shift more responsibility for disaster response and recovery to the states. Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has argued that the disaster relief agency is ineffective, partisan and bloated, despite a 2023 Government Accountability Office report that found the agency was facing a staffing shortfall of more than 6,000 employees.

While FEMA is a part of DHS, Congress passed a law in 2006 that stated the homeland security secretary “may not substantially or significantly reduce” FEMA’s “authorities, responsibilities, or functions.”

Illston noted that DHS was exempt from Trump’s January 2025 hiring freeze but the department then interpreted “new hires” under the hiring freeze to include FEMA CORE renewals.

Referring to the DHS decision to revoke FEMA’s authority to renew those CORE appointments, Illston wrote, “There is no evidence in the record reflecting reasoned decision for this about-face or for the subsequent conditions DHS placed on FEMA’s renewal authority.”

CNN has reached out to DHS and FEMA for comment.

In a separate filing, Illston said the use of Signal, a secure messaging app with robust privacy features, by former acting FEMA head Karen Evans and former DHS deputy chief of staff Joseph Guy violated federal law and department policy.

Evans created a Signal chat that “would appear to be highly relevant to this case” with the text messages set to auto-delete after four weeks, the judge wrote. In March, after she had been named a defendant in the lawsuit, Evans shortened the auto-delete timer.

Evans created a backup of her Signal messages on April 2026, “by which point the most timely messages were long since deleted,” Illston wrote. The court found that Evans’ actions were intentional.

“Evans should have known better,” Illston wrote. “She previously served as Chief Information Officer at DHS, in charge of the agency’s records preservation policies.”

The judge barred the administration from relying in future proceedings on any previous testimony that denies the plans to dramatically reduce FEMA staffing or DHS’ involvement in the issue.

In those additional proceedings, she wrote, “the Court will presume that the lost Signal messages would have been unfavorable to Defendants because they would have been further evidence of Defendants’ plan, DHS’s control, and Defendants’ implementing actions.”

The decisions are a win for the American Federation of Government Employees and the AFL-CIO, the labor unions that brought the lawsuit. But Illston didn’t address what remedies the government should provide, ordering the parties to come up with an agreement on the scope of relief.

The unions had sought the rescission of all non-renewal notices sent to CORE employees since the start of the year and to return employees to their positions, along with stopping the agency from implementing a plan to cut 50% of its staff.

But Illston noted that relief would be too broad because FEMA is no longer systemically not renewing the CORE contracts “and there is no indication at present that FEMA is otherwise taking action” on the plan to cut half of its workforce. But the judge said DHS “continues to usurp FEMA’s authority” by ordering the agency to offer contracts of up to 180 days.

内森·霍华德/路透社

一位联邦法官周五在一份文件中表示，特朗普政府下令联邦紧急事务管理局削减近一半人员编制是非法的。

在持续进行的诉讼中，美国北加州地区法官苏珊·伊尔斯顿做出了一项对工会工人而言至关重要的裁决。她表示，国土安全部撤销联邦紧急事务管理署（FEMA）续签其应急响应小组合同的授权是“专断且反复无常的”。她还谴责官员删除了本可作为诉讼证据的Signal通讯记录。

应急响应和恢复小组（简称CORE）约占联邦紧急事务管理署（FEMA）员工总数的40%。当飓风和其他大型灾害来袭时，这些小组往往是第一批抵达现场的联邦救援力量。其中许多工作人员负责监督援助物资的分发以及向各州和社区提供的长期资金支持。

传统上，CORE项目工作人员签订的是两到四年的合同，而且几乎总是会续签。但在特朗普政府大力推进2025年联邦政府规模缩减计划的过程中，国土安全部限制联邦紧急事务管理署（FEMA）每次续签此类合同的期限为180天，同时也在考虑一项缩减该机构规模的长期计划。

1月份，国土安全部指示联邦紧急事务管理局至少让其中一些合同失效，迫使员工在合同期满时离职。

这些举措是特朗普政府改革联邦紧急事务管理署（FEMA）、缩减其规模并将更多灾害应对和恢复责任下放给各州的更广泛计划的一部分。自唐纳德·特朗普总统上任以来，他的政府一直声称该灾害救援机构效率低下、党派色彩浓厚且机构臃肿，尽管美国政府问责局（GAO）2023年的一份报告发现，该机构面临着超过6000名员工的人员​​缺口。

虽然 FEMA 是 DHS 的一部分，但国会在 2006 年通过了一项法律，规定国土安全部长“不得大幅或显著减少”FEMA 的“权力、责任或职能”。

伊尔斯顿指出，国土安全部不受特朗普 2025 年 1 月的招聘冻结令的限制，但该部门随后将招聘冻结令下的“新员工”解释为包括 FEMA CORE 续签。

伊尔斯顿在谈到国土安全部撤销联邦紧急事务管理局续签核心任命权的决定时写道：“记录中没有任何证据表明，国土安全部做出这一180度大转弯的决定，或随后对联邦紧急事务管理局续签权附加条件，是出于合理的考虑。”

CNN已联系国土安全部和联邦紧急事务管理署寻求置评。

伊尔斯顿在另一份文件中表示，前联邦紧急事务管理署代理署长凯伦·埃文斯和前国土安全部副幕僚长约瑟夫·盖伊使用具有强大隐私功能的安全消息应用程序 Signal 违反了联邦法律和部门政策。

法官写道，埃文斯创建了一个Signal聊天记录，该记录“似乎与本案高度相关”，并将短信设置为四周后自动删除。3月份，在被列为诉讼被告后，埃文斯缩短了自动删除的时限。

伊尔斯顿写道，埃文斯在2026年4月备份了她的Signal消息，“到那时，那些最重要的消息早已被删除”。法院认定埃文斯的行为是故意的。

伊尔斯顿写道：“埃文斯本应更清楚这一点。她之前曾担任国土安全部首席信息官，负责该机构的档案保存政策。”

法官禁止政府在未来的诉讼程序中依赖任何否认大幅削减联邦紧急事务管理署人员编制或国土安全部参与该问题的先前证词。

她写道，在这些补充诉讼程序中，“法院将推定丢失的 Signal 信息对被告不利，因为它们将进一步证明被告的计划、国土安全部的控制以及被告的实施行动。”

这些裁决对提起诉讼的工会——美国政府雇员联合会和美国劳工联合会-产业工会联合会——来说是一次胜利。但伊尔斯顿法官并未就政府应提供哪些补救措施作出规定，而是命令双方就救济范围达成一致。

工会要求撤销自年初以来向 CORE 员工发出的所有不续约通知，并让员工重返岗位，同时阻止该机构实施裁员 50% 的计划。

但伊尔斯顿指出，这样的救济范围太广，因为联邦紧急事务管理署（FEMA）不再系统性地不续签核心合同，“而且目前没有任何迹象表明FEMA正在采取其他行动”来解决裁减一半员工的计划。但法官表示，国土安全部命令FEMA提供最长180天的合同，此举“继续僭越了FEMA的权力”。